How long should unauthorized immigrants wait for U.S. citizenship?

If there is one idea that has survived the various incarnations of immigration reform, it is this: If unauthorized immigrants in the United States are allowed to stay, they must go to the back of the line.

President Barack Obama has invoked the line. Congressional leaders have referred to the line. Average citizens on multiple sides of the debate have brought up this notion of the line.

What exactly is the line, who is in it and why is it central to the nation’s most substantial effort to change the U.S. immigration system since the 1980s?

The line represents people outside of the United States waiting to immigrate legally through family or employer sponsorship — currently 4.4 million applicants. Lawmakers, researchers and grass-roots activists debate whether the estimated 11 million unauthorized immigrants in this country should have to wait until all current applicants in line are processed to become legal permanent residents, or whether they should follow a new waiting period not tied to the existing immigration queues.

The simplistic portrayals of the current line do not reflect the complex reality of the nation’s immigration system.

That system is a labyrinth beginning with family or employer sponsorship. The majority of the backlog is in the family category because entry is dependent on the applicant’s age, marital status and relationship to the sponsor, country of origin, and whether the sponsor is a citizen or a legal permanent resident.

Annual caps on the number of visas granted further complicate the process, especially for people from countries with hundreds of thousands of applicants.

Those variables mean that some applicants wait a few years to enter the United States, while others wait up to 23 years.

The numbers

More than 482,000 visas were granted last year for all categories of legal immigration. Many of them went to applicants who waited as long ago as 1988, according to the U.S. State Department, which approves or denies visas.

The agency reported that the average wait for a family visa from most countries is eight years. High-volume nations — Mexico, China, India and the Philippines — have the longest waits. For instance, Mexicans are waiting as long as 18 years while people from the Philippines have waited nearly a quarter-century.

This year, under the existing Immigration and Naturalization Act, a maximum of 226,000 family-sponsored visas and 154,000 employment-based visas will be granted. Visas for the immediate relatives of U.S. citizens — spouses, minor/unmarried children and parents — are not limited by any quota.

The proposals

In recent months, policymakers have seemingly preferred that if unauthorized immigrants are allowed to remain in the U.S., they should not gain legal permanent residency until all current visa applicants have been processed.

With no changes to the nation’s current immigration queues, it could take as much as 19 years to clear the backlog, said Muzaffar Chishti, director of the Migration Policy Institute’s office at the New York University School of Law.

Chishti said Congress has several options, including:

• Keeping unauthorized immigrants in a temporary residency status until all existing legal visa applicants have been addressed.